Palin’s e-mails, Capone’s safe, Obama’s judges

The chin-stroking among media critics and the punditocracy about the recent press frenzy over Sarah Palin’s less-than-riveting gubernatorial e-mails continues. It was a great discredit to the trade, we’re told — presuming we have any credit to dis.

It’s as if no one remembers the spectacular Geraldo Rivera “special” 25 years ago when he blew open Al Capone’s safe on live television, only to find a stop sign and two empty gin bottles inside.

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Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. Recall the media circus on the Hill back in September 1998 when Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr , ever-so-discreetly sent a motorcade up to Congress to drop off those boxes with the results of his investigation of the relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. There was fine material in that lode — though some of it not suitable for a family newspaper.

The Palin documents were, after all, appropriately solicited official government records sought under the state’s public records law back in September 2008 — when Gov. Palin was running to be a heartbeat from the presidency.

Besides, there’s very little else the press could have done but go up to see what’s in them. That’s why good spinmeisters find media ma­nipu­la­tion so easy. In many ways not much has changed since the days of that pack of reporters in the classic 1940 movie “His Girl Friday,” with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

Rivera, in an interview 20 years after the event, said he was “humiliated and deeply embarrassed.” But then, he said, he found out the next morning that the show “was the highest rated syndicated special in television history.”

He’s still laughing — all the way to the bank.

Diversity watch

In 1934, an Ohio judge named Florence E. Allen was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the first woman on the federal bench. It was a historic moment, reported in the major papers of the day.

Now, not so historic. In fact, nearly half the federal judges appointed by President Obama so far have been women.

Of Obama’s 86 district and circuit judges so far, 39 (45 percent) have been women. If you add his two Supreme Court justices, it’s close to 47 percent, according to Senate Judiciary Committee figures. That’s more than double the percentage of women named by George W. Bush (22 percent) and substantially higher than Clinton’s 28 percent total. (The Bush and Clinton figures are final numbers after eight years.)

The percentage of women on the federal courts doesn’t appear likely to change as new judges are nominated. All four nominees at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing were women.

In addition, half of the 14 Asia-Pacific Americans on the bench are Obama appointees. Included in that group are the first Vietnamese American on the federal bench and the first female Chinese American and Korean American federal judges. One Obama nominee, if confirmed, would be the only Native American now on the federal bench.

For the diversity bean-counters, 22 percent of Obama’s judicial appointees have been African Americans, compared with 7 percent for Bush and 16 percent for Clinton. Some 11 percent of Obama’s appointee have been Hispanics, compared with 9 percent for Bush and 7 percent for Clinton.